What issues are top priority for vet advocacy groups when Congress returns to session?

Welcome back to Defense News Weekly, where we're talking with Ryan Gallucci from the VFW

Ryan, talk to me about what the other congressional priorities are going to be for the rest of this year

What are you guys going to be when Congress comes back into town? You guys will be working all through August, but when they come back into town, what are you going to be beating them up about

Well, when they come back in town, we come back in town in force. And the VFW has a national legislative committee with representatives from every state

It's about 100 people who come to Washington, D.C. to advocate with their legislators

They'll be coming in early September, right when Congress comes back. So we'll be pushing for reforms like the Access Act on community care, but also bipartisan

initiatives that we think can get done. Like we talked a little bit before about Congressman Bergman and Correa's Innovative Therapy Centers

of Excellence Act, our TAP Promotion Act, which is about access to accredited claims representation

That's in the baseline of the National Defense Authorization Act. And then, of course, the Major Richard Starr Act

concurrent receipt for combat wounded veterans combat wounded retirees which has bipartisan support to go in as an amendment for the NDA But there another one that we really started to talk

about. So we're the veterans of foreign wars. What makes us unique is you have to have served

overseas in a conflict. And so we regularly visit service members who are stationed overseas

and those who support them. Since last fall, we visited places like Germany, Italy, Korea

and heard about challenges with accessing health care, some of it with the active duty force that needs to be resolved through TRICARE overseas

and some cultural differences in care delivery. But then also, we really want to focus on VA's programs for civilian veterans who live overseas

So that's a lot. But basically, if you are a veteran stateside, you're entitled to the full suite of VA care and benefits

If you're overseas, it's something called the Foreign Medical Program. And really all it covers is reimbursement

for conditions that are service connected. Now the veteran who overseas is responsible for then finding a doctor on their own receiving the care paying for the care up front then filing for reimbursement through VA hopefully Now there isn much structure to it but what we heard first of all

most veterans who are living overseas are working to support U.S. interests, largely through the

military, but also through the State Department. We presented it two years ago that this is a

potential national security risk. We caught the attention of a congressman out of New Jersey

Jeff Van Drew. And last Congress, he introduced the Foreign Medical Program Modernization Act

This Congress, he reintroduced it as H.R. 467, which would provide some structure to the program

similar to VA's other community care programs, but also make sure that veterans are receiving

coordinated care, even if they're overseas supporting American interests. Now, the reason

this is important, we're not just pushing for that act. We'd also like the committees to host

a hearing on overseas veterans. There are a lot of veterans who..

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, because that really is a group that doesn have a voice you know that doesn have a congressman necessarily to rely on So for VFW this seems like a group that you kind of have to be out there for

Exactly. I mean, that's who we see that we are, and that's who we seek to speak for

You know, a lot of issues in Congress, if there's an issue at, say, right here at Fort Belvoir in Virginia

the congressional delegation for the state of Virginia is going to receive a critical mass of inquiries

from all of their constituents who are stationed on Fort Belvoir, work on Fort Belvoir

But when you're overseas in Yakuska, Japan, or Camp Humphreys, or Wiesbaden, Stuttgart

Vicenza, you know, when you write your congressman or your senator, they may get one or two inquiries

And every congressman or senator may get one or two inquiries. There's never that critical mass

where a member of Congress would say, hey, this is a problem here. We have to address it

Listen, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much. We'll cover these issues in the months to come. For coverage on all of these topics and more, you can visit us on Military

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Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next week